The Portland Sketch Book. Various
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the restless expanse toward us, and every rope and spar of our vessel, begemmed with bright dew-drops, flashed and twinkled in his beams, like the jeweled robes of a princely bride.
"Fore top there! what's that away in the wake o' the sun?" called out Mr. Dacres.
"A drifting spar, I believe, Sir—but the sun throws such a glare on the water I cannot see plainly."
I looked in the direction pointed out, and saw a dark object tumbling about on the fiery swell, like an evil spirit in torment. We altered our course and stood away toward it. It turned out to be a boat, apparently empty, but on a nearer inspection we perceived a man lying under its thwarts, whose pale, lank features and sunken eye bespoke him as suffering the last pangs of starvation. My surprise can better be imagined than described, on discovering in the unfortunate man a highly loved companion of my boyhood, Frederick Percy! He was transferred from his miserable quarters to a snug berth on board of the Dart, and in a few hours, by the judicious management of our surgeon, was resuscitated, so as to be able to come on deck.
His story may be told in a few words. He had been travelling in England—while there had married a beautiful, but friendless orphan. Soon after this occurrence he embarked in one of his father's ships for Philadelphia, intending to touch at St. Domingo city, and take in a freight. But, three days before, when within a few hours' sail of their destined port, they had fallen in with a piratical schooner, which, after a short struggle, succeeded in capturing them. While protecting his wife from the insults of the bucaneers, he received a blow in the temple, which deprived him of his senses; and when he awoke to consciousness it was night, wild and dark, and he was tossing on the lone sea, without provisions, sail or oars, as we had found him. For three days he had not tasted food. Poor fellow! his anxiety as to the fate of his wife almost drove him to distraction.
This circumstance assured us that we were on the right trail of the marauder whom we sought. We continued beating up the coast till noon, when the breeze died away into a stark calm, and we lay rolling on the long glassy swell, about ten leagues from the St. Domingo shore. The sun was intensely powerful, glowing through the hazy atmosphere, directly over our heads, like a red-hot cannon ball; and the far-stretching main was as sultry and arid as the sands of an African desert. To the north, the cloud-topped mountains of St. Domingo obstructed our view, looming through the blue haze to an immense height—presenting to as the aspect of huge, flat, shadowy walls; and one need have taxed his imagination but lightly, to fancy them the boundaries dividing us from a brighter and a better clime. The depths of the ocean were as translucent as an unobscured summer sky, and far beneath us we could distinguish the dolphins and king-fish, roaming leisurely about, or darting hither and thither as some object attracted their pursuit; while nearer its surface the blue element was alive with myriads of minor nondescripts, riggling, flouncing and lazily moving up and down,—probably attracted by the shade of our dark hull.
The men having little else to do, obtained from the captain permission to fish. Directly they had hauled in a dozen or more of the most ill-favored, shapeless, unchristian-looking articles I ever clapped eyes on, which, when I came from aft, were dancing their death jigs on the forecastle-deck, much to the diversion of the captain's black waiter, Essequibo.
"Halloo!—this way, blackey!" shouted an old tar to the merry African, who, by the way, was a kind of reference table for the whole crew—"Egad! Billy, look here,—what do you call this comical looking devil that has helped himself to my hook? Why! his body is as long as the articles of discipline, and his mouth almost as long as his body!—your own main-hatch-way is not a circumstance to it!"
"Him be one gar fish—ocium gar!—he no good for eat," answered the black with a grin that drew the corners of his mouth almost back to his ears, so that, to appearance, small was the hinge that kept brain and body together.
At the sight the querist dropped the fish, exclaiming with feigned wonder, "By all that's crooked, an even bet!—ar'n't your mouth made ov injy rubber, Billy!"
"Good ting to hab de larsh mout, Misser Mongo,—eat de more—lib de longer," said Billy.
"Screw your blinkers this way, Jack Simpson, there's a prize for you," said another, as he dragged a huge lump-headed, bull-eyed, tail-less mass out of the water, with fins protruding, like thorns, from every part of his body!—"Guess he's one of the fighting cocks down below, seeing his spurs!—any how, he's well armed,—I'll be keel-hauled, if he don't look like the beauty that we saw carved out on the Frencher's stern, with the Neptune bestride it, in Havana, barin' he wants a tail! Han't he a queer un?—but how in natur do you suppose he makes out to steer without a rudder?"
"Steer wid he head turn behin' him!" answered Seignor Essequibo, bursting into a chuckling laugh—mightily tickled with the struggles of the ungainly monster,—"Che, che, che!—him sea-dragum—catch um plenty on de cos ob Barbado. Take care ob him horn!"
"Yo, heave, ho! Shaint Pathrick, an' it's me what's caught a whale!" drawled out a brawny Patlander, while he tugged and sweated to heave in his prize.
"My gorra! you hook one barracouter!" cried Billy, as his eye caught a glimpse of the big fish curveting in the water at the end of Paddy's line,—"Bes' fish in de worl'!—good for make um chowder—good for fry—for ebery ting,—me help you pull him in, Massa Coulan," and without further ado, he laid hold of the line. The beautiful fish was hauled in, and consigned to the custody of the cook.
"Stave in my bulwarks, if this 'ere dragon-fish ha'n't stuck one of his horns into my foot an inch deep!" roared an old marine,—"Hand me that sarving mallet, snow ball, I'll see if I can't give him a hint to behave better!"
"Hurrah!—here comes an owl-fish, I reckon;" shouted a merry wight of a tar, from the land of wooden nutmegs,—"specimen of the salt-water owl! Lord, look at his teeth—how he grins!—What are you laughing at, my beauty?"
"Le diable! une chouette dans la mer?" exclaimed a little wizen-pated Frenchman, who had seated himself astraddle of the cathead.—"Vel, Monsieur Vagastafsh, comment nommez vous dish petit poisson?"
"Poison! No, Monsheer, I rather guess there han't the least bit o' poison in natur about that ere young shark!" replied Wagstaff, "though for that matter a shark's worse'n poison."
"I not mean poison—I say poisson—fish."
"O, poison fish—yes, I know—you'll find plenty of them on the Bahamy copper banks. I always gets the cook to put a piece of silver in the boilers, when we grub on fish in them ere parts."
"O, mon dieu! le rashcalle hash bitez mon vum almos' off! Sacré, vous ingrat, to treatez me so like, when I am feed you wis de bon dîner!"
My attention was called away from this scene of hilarity, by the voice of the watch in the fore-top, announcing a sail in sight.
A faint indefinable speck could be seen in the quarter designated, fluttering on the bosom of the blue sea like a drift of foam. With the aid of the glass we made it out to be the topsail of a schooner, so distant that her hull and lower sails were below the brim of the horizon. Her canvas had probably just been unloosed to the breeze, which was directly after seen roughening the face of the broad, smooth expanse as it swept down toward us.
"That glass, Mr. Waters—she is standing toward us, and by the gods of war! the cut of her narrow flying royal, looks marvellously like that of our friend, the Sea-Sprite!" said the captain, while the blood flashed over his bald forehead, like 'heat lightning' over a summer cloud; "Mr. Hackinsack, see that every thing is ready for a chase."
The broad sails were unloosed and sheeted close home. Directly the wind was with us, and we were bowling along under a press of canvas.
"Now, quartermaster, look to your sails as closely, as you would watch one seeking your life." Another squint through the glass. "Ha! they have suspected us, and are standing in toward the land, jam on the wind;—let them look to it sharply; it must be a fleet pair of heels that can keep pace with the Dart,—though to say the least of yonder cruiser, she is no laggard!"
After pacing the deck some ten minutes, he again hove short and lifted the glass to his